The Mechanical Theater (11 page)

Mr. Stricket appeared behind the counter as she swept, wedging himself between the stacks of broken tickers piled around the door to the back room, carrying a box in his bony arms.

Petra always thought he looked like a grandfather should, though he had no children or grandchildren of his own. His hair was thick and white, combed back from his pale green eyes, and he had a spindly look about him, with bony limbs and knobby joints, like the hands of a clock. He always moved so slowly, like the minute hand, taking a deliberate amount of time to do anything.

He set the box on the counter and peered over his glasses at her.

“Petra, my dear, can you put this portable phonograph in the display? Mark it repaired at four quid.”

“Of course, Mr. Stricket.”

She leaned the broom against the bit of blank wall behind the front door and met Mr. Stricket at the back desk. He opened the velvet-­lined box, worth at least a half-­sovereign on its own, and revealed the repaired phonograph, the brass horn polished to a glossy shine.

Petra craved to see it work, but it had no cylinder to play.

Mr. Stricket smiled. “Go on. Give it a crank.”

She curled her fingers around the handle and wound the phonograph. Smooth, rhythmic ticking vibrated within the mechanism, and she knew that somewhere within gears turned the arbor, tightening the mainspring. She released the crank, and the gears of the empty cylinder chamber rotated in perfect synchronization. Not a single gear was out of line. The faint hum of gear harmony buzzed within the ticker, and to Petra, it produced a sound so beautiful, no concerto could hope to compare.

“It’s brilliant,” she said.

“I knew you would appreciate it,” he said, patting her arm. “You have such an ear for machinery. I’d like to see a mechanical engineer at that school sharper than you.”

Petra suppressed the heat of embarrassment that welled up inside her and replied with an uneasy smile. Turning her back to Mr. Stricket, she carried the phonograph to the display window and perched it on the shelf, carefully arranging the box to showcase the polished horn.

“Are we still on for tonight?” asked Mr. Stricket.

“Of course. Will we be working on the music box again?”

Mr. Stricket nodded. “I think just one more night of work and you’ll be finished with it. Perhaps we will be lucky enough to hear it play tonight, hmm?” Smiling, he turned his attention to a stack of receipts next to the register and adjusted his glasses on his nose.

Petra turned back to the window and penciled the price of the phonograph on a sale tag. As she placed the card in front of the box, a group of University students turned down the street, heading toward the nearby pub. Petra shrank behind the edge of the shelf. They had probably been among the boys who laughed at her that morning. Such prats, with their fancy degrees from prestigious institutions. What made them better than her?

She peered through the door window. The one in the front looked worst of the lot. He had a relaxed, arrogant posture, a natural aloofness that resonated with confidence, as if he owned the whole street. His hair was dark, perfectly tousled and casually swept away from his eyes. He laughed at something one of the other boys said, and his proud, carefree features filled her gut with fire, the echo of her earlier humiliation burning in her stomach. If she could just prove herself, they wouldn’t laugh. They’d see she was a brilliant engineer.

As they passed directly in front of the pawnshop, the dark-­haired boy stopped suddenly and looked around. Petra froze, pressing herself into the shadows. Had he seen her? The door muffled their voices, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. With her head ducked beneath the window, she wedged the door open a smidge.

“Did it break down?” asked one of the boys. “Good thing you signed the contract already, or else the Guild would want their money back.” The quip was met with laughter from the other boys.

“Shove off, Wolfe.”

The dark-­haired boy marched back up the street. A strange brass object lay in the road, wobbling and hissing steam as it writhed upon the cobblestone. The boy knelt down and lifted the contraption.

“It tripped,” he hollered. He stood the machine up and it took a few jerky steps forward. Petra’s eyes widened. It was a ticker—­a
walking
ticker.

“Mr. Stricket,” she said, “I’ll be out cleaning the front steps.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. Snatching the broom, she eased her way onto the landing, careful to let the door close quietly behind her. She didn’t want to draw attention to her presence; the boys might recognize her.

The dark-­haired boy and his automaton came slowly down the street. The ticker stood no higher than his waist, stepping forward with long, rocking strides. Now that Petra saw it up close, the machine was nothing impressive. It was a prototype at best, a rough experiment thrown together in a week’s time. It might walk, but it didn’t have the efficiency a properly built ticker demanded—­the most obvious fault was the unsightly hydraulic pumps its designer had adopted to drive the legs, leading to an erratic, uneven distribution of power. The entire thing wobbled as it came down the street, the plating that covered its mechanical insides rattling with each jerky step.

Petra figured she could have built it solely out of clockwork, making it run quieter, more efficiently, and without the jolting. It was only a matter of linking the right mechanisms.

The weight of the screwdriver in her pocket multiplied, and she itched to open the thing up and see exactly how the inept engineer had put it together.

“How much was it they offered you?” asked another boy, his voice carrying loudly down the street.

The few pedestrians nearby gathered around the huddle of students, staring at the automaton. A handful of them were probably Luddites, ready to spring on the abomination like rabid apes. Petra absentmindedly swept the landing, listening to the boys.

“A thousand quid, wasn’t it?” speculated one of the other students.

The number was met with a few audible gasps from the assembled onlookers. A thousand quid was more money than the entire street might make in a year, more than the whole shop of Stricket & Monfore was even worth.

Petra gaped. “A thousand quid for
that
?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized it. “I could have built that lousy piece of junk in an afternoon.”

The boys swiveled toward her, quickly dismissing her with belittling remarks and laughter as they took in the sight of her. The ­people along the street whispered behind their hands; most of them knew Petra, or knew of her weird fascination with machines. She gave them no notice—­the thoughtless lemmings. Instead, her gaze moved to the dark-­haired engineer. He stared back at her with a bemused smile, but he did not sneer or titter like the others. He probably thought she wasn’t worth his time.

Petra wanted him to challenge her. She’d show them what she knew of machines.

One of the students, a prudish boy, tall and thin with tawny hair, piped up, “You? You think
you
could build this?” He looked her up and down and glanced at the pawnshop sign above her head with a smirk. “What would a
shop girl
know about machines?” He pointed to the rickety ticker and laughed. “This is the latest advancement in modern science, you stupid girl. You can’t even fathom the complexities of this machinery.”

Petra’s cheeks burned at the insult, and the humiliation of the morning rushed back to the forefront of her mind. Setting the broom aside, she lifted her skirts and tromped down the steps. The boys towered over her, but she did not back down, raising her chin to stare into her challenger’s face. “It’s a mediocre ticker
at best
, a clumsy amalgamation of mechanics and hydraulics. I’d be ashamed to call that thing mine.”

“Is that so?”

The voice came from her left, and she whirled on the speaker. “Yes, it—­” She stood face-­to-­face with the automaton’s engineer, that stupid grin still on his lips. She scowled up at him.

“If you have criticism of my machine, I would like to hear it,” he said, crossing his arms. His copper eyes gleamed curiously. “Tell me, miss—­what would you do differently?”

Petra stepped away from the group of boys and glared at the University engineer. He thought she’d make a fool of herself. Well, she’d show him. She approached the ticker and knelt at its side, ignoring the other boys’ laughter. The machine stood quietly, the faint hum of moving gears keeping it steady.

She ran her fingers down the grooves that linked the outer plates and felt around its joints. The exoskeleton was flawless—­a true work of art—­but the driving mechanisms were subpar. Thick, rubber hydraulic lines ran up its legs, the liquid heated by pilot lights at its feet. Petra knew little about hydraulics and steam power, but she didn’t see why the automaton needed the clumsy, inefficient system when clockwork would do. If she could construct two linked mainsprings, she could drive the automaton from a central power source without a battery or hydraulics. The science was sound, but it was still only a theory of hers. She hadn’t been able to test it yet. But from the theoretical clockwork core, joining gearboxes to the proper linkages, she could easily create a stable walking pattern, and the machine would operate without the wobbling or the need for sporadic steam expulsion.

Petra laid her hand on the machine’s chest. The whir of gears vibrated beneath the brass plating. At least the automaton’s heart was in the right place, though there was a slight catch at every fifth and eighth rotation. One of the gears was unbalanced, throwing the weight of the driveshaft off-­center. What she couldn’t figure out was how the engineer controlled the automaton, how it changed actions seemingly of its own accord. She found no operating controls on its exterior, no levers, pulls, or buttons that might be switched on and off. She wanted to take it apart, piece by piece. If she could reach her screwdriver without the boy noticing, she could have the automaton disassembled before he could blink.

The engineer cleared his throat. “Well, what do you think of it?”

The group of boys snickered, and she could feel their scornful gazes and the eyes of the others on the street, just as they had stared at her in the University lobby, judging her, mocking her. She gritted her teeth, hating all of them, but hating herself more for putting herself in the same situation a second time in the same day.

Petra stood and glared at the engineer, and there was a flicker of something in his expression as their eyes met. It wasn’t disrespect or contempt or even indifference, all the things she was used to seeing when someone challenged her knowledge or skill. Instead, he looked at her with focused calculation, as if trying to discern what made her tick. She knew the look well; it was the way she looked at machines.

She tried holding the engineer’s gaze, filling her eyes with defiance and loathing, but his stare was too intense, too penetrating. She turned away and swallowed the lecture on gear trains, linkages, and mainsprings. “What do I know? I’m just a shop girl.”

“Don’t waste your time, Goss,” said Wolfe. “She doesn’t know anything. Let’s get on to the pub.”

The engineer acknowledged his statement with a dismissive wave, but his eyes never left Petra’s face. “What’s your name?” he asked quietly.

She blinked, entranced by those copper eyes. They seemed familiar somehow.

“Goss! Come on, mate!”

He frowned and glanced toward the others. “On my way!” He turned back to Petra and offered a polite smile. “Sorry about them,” he said softly. “They’ve never met a girl quite like you.”

Finally, she found her voice. “And you have?”

“Well I have now, at the very least,” he said with a smile. “Until next time.” With a slight tilt of his head, he withdrew and turned toward the pub. Not a step behind him, the automaton sprang to life and tottered after the engineer like an obedient pup.

Petra stared. How did it move without contact? No matter its shoddy workmanship, the engineer had somehow fashioned a way to control the ticker without physically touching the contraption. She distractedly walked back to the pawnshop steps and inadvertently stubbed her toe on the bottom stair, her eyes still on the automaton.

The students filed into the pub down the street. When the last of them disappeared behind the open door, the engineer casually glanced back at the pawnshop, his eyes lingering on her for only a second. Then he went into the pub, the automaton ambling in after him, and the door shut behind them. The huddled onlookers dispersed then, leaving the street dull and empty once again.

Petra plopped down on the stairs. Her screwdriver slid from her pocket and clattered against the stone, her enthusiasm for mechanics crashing to the ground along with it. Aside from steam power and hydraulics, she had considered herself a prodigy of ticker mechanics. She had studied machines all her life, and never had she read of or devised a way to control tickers from a distance without the aid of some sort of connecting device.

And some arrogant engineer had figured out a way to do it. The thought burned her from the inside. There was more for her to learn, and she wasn’t going to stand by and let some University fop outclass her. She climbed to her feet, her eyes on the pub door. She’d find out how he did it—­sooner or later.

“H
and me that bit there,” said Petra, her fingers deep inside a musical box frame. She sat at the worktable in the back room of the pawnshop, with Mr. Stricket hovering over her shoulder.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The governor assembly.”

Mr. Stricket handed over the part. Petra wedged it into the base of the musical box and screwed it into the bedplate. Then she carefully connected the gear train, and finally placed the pin next to the air brake.

“Finished?” asked Mr. Stricket.

She gave the musical box the once-­over and nodded. “I think so.”

“Give it a wind.”

Petra turned the crank handle. The pawl clicked on the wheel of the mechanism, holding the mainspring in place. Two months of work, and so far, so good. She rotated the crank three times and sucked in her breath. One gear out of line, one tiny mistake, and the box wouldn’t play. She pulled the pin from its holster, releasing the air brake and the mainspring. Silence. The air brake whirred, and everything turned like it was supposed to. One second ticked by. Two seconds. She had failed. Three seconds. She had done something wrong. Her mind picked through the months-­long process of repairing the musical box, trying to figure out where she might have made a mistake, and then the music played. A tinkling sonata reverberated from the musical box, silencing her doubts.